In a December 2023 essay, songwriter Emily Sprague wrote about her fascination with “skinny locations”: occasions or locations “the place the barrier between our world and all that lies past it turns into porous,” typically because of a near-death expertise, a loss, or a inventive move state. “I consider magic as being all the time round us in these types of the pure world and the mysterious issues that happen inside it,” she wrote. “We will’t harness it, however we are able to participate, witness, and be in awe.” On Jellywish, the fifth album from her indie-folk band Florist, Sprague expresses this sense of surprise by means of the worldly-yet-otherworldly avatar of the jellyfish. One of the vital historical life kinds on Earth—predating the dinosaurs, they’ve been in existence for greater than 500 million years—jellyfish are mysterious issues certainly. They don’t have any brains, but they study and have reminiscences; their intricate nervous techniques absorb sensory info by means of the whole thing of their porous our bodies. On Jellywish, the presence of this near-alien creature floats by means of Sprague’s lyrics as a relentless reminder to all the time soak on the planet round us with a way of wide-eyed awe.
The “skinny place” between two worlds can be represented by the punning of the report’s title: not only a jellyfish, however a jellywant, one thing much more intangible and ineffable. It’s an apt title for a report that’s grounded within the earthly, existentialist people that characterised Florist’s earlier releases, but in addition has a playful, virtually hallucinogenic high quality. In its most intimate moments, the album recollects Sprague’s starkly weak 2019 solo outing, Emily Alone, but in addition weaves into its cloth a lightweight contact of the ambient, digital textures that crammed the band’s 2022 self-titled report.
The small miracles of on a regular basis life populate these songs. Sprague sees home life, familial love, and neighborhood by means of a sun-streaked lens on “Sparkle Tune” and “Our Hearts in a Room.” However her lyrics principally return to topics she has revisited so many occasions that, on Jellywish, she additionally displays on her weariness of speaking about them: grief, loss of life, and mortality. Right here, although, even these subjects are a part of the report’s life-affirming heat. This duality characterizes “This Was a Reward,” a bittersweet music about mourning and heartbreak as obligatory seasons of affection. The music begins deceptively merely, however steadily expands its horizons outwards. Although loss of life is sprinkled all through Sprague’s chanting refrain, she delivers it like a rallying cry, buoyed by a jubilant flourish of meandering electrical guitar melodies.